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“We will never forget.” This sentiment is nearly universally applied in remembrance of the September 11 anniversary. But what does it mean? Since most do not personally know someone who perished, it is doubtful it is intended to memorialize a particular individual. Rather, it is intended as a warning to those that attacked us, “I will never forget how you hurt us; you will pay for what you have done.” It is a passive-aggressive remembrance. But when a bee stings someone perhaps it is more fruitful to try understanding why they got stung than to wage war against the hive....

Show me a worker laboring without any contributions from capital and I’ll show you naked primitives feeding off berries and dead carcasses. Every advance in the standard of living is built on a foundation of both labor and the deferred consumption (capital creation) that permits the creation of tools to augment laboring efforts. Holidays should be deployed to remind the populace of that which normally escapes public notice. This is exactly why we need a “Capital Day”. Although capital surrounds us, it is too often ignored, like the air we breathe, and like air, our society would be dead without...

The current outrage-du-jour over the skyrocketing price of EpiPens is a perfect example of the effectiveness of a societal indoctrination that leaves us blind to the parasitic ills wrought by the state. The credulous media reports with much indignation and finger wagging over yet another example of an evil profiteering corporation charging outrageous sums for a life-sustaining drug. Clearly this fits with the media’s preconceived narrative that capitalism is bad and we need government to right such wrongs. Case closed. No need to scratch the surface and investigate the cause and effect of this phenomenon.

Slow internet. No words invoke greater apoplexy in modern man than these. Oconee County, being largely rural, has suffered through its share of less than ideal Internet connectivity over the last decade. So it is little wonder that county officials recently engaged representatives of Corning Optical Communications to discuss the possibility of wiring the entire county for fiber optic Internet access. As a resident myself, nothing would please me more. However, as an ethically consistent human being, I cannot opt to ignore a little thing like theft even when that theft might benefit me personally.

Clinton maintains she was truthful when asked about these emails. In order for her to be both truthful and for classified materials to have been sent necessitates that Clinton be either incompetent or lacking in mental facilities. If she is not an imbecile, then she is a bold faced liar. Logically there is no other choice. Neither of these (perjury or stupidity) are desirable traits in a potential President.

These schools are hooked on this federal money and will do anything the Feds “ask.” If the prospect is losing millions in DOE funding or making students and parents jump through absurd hoops or be grossly inconvenienced, they’ll choose the latter every time. If you make a deal with the Devil, then you play by his rules.

Gun control does not and cannot “work” if the goal is to decrease human death. If the goal is to decrease gun ownership, then yes, it works just fine. Gun control affords an illusion of safety by virtue of willfully ignoring the substitution effect; that is, guns are simply a means to an end, if that means is denied, then another means may be substituted to achieve the same (or worse) effect.

In 2015 one-hundred twenty-four police lost their lives. Nearly half of those were related to some kind of traffic incident. Meanwhile police killed 1,208 people in 2015. Some were unavoidable. But the majority of these deaths were unnecessary. Many involved innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others involved minor incidents that quickly escalated because of poor choices. The dictum that “officer safety” is paramount should concern any of us who might absentmindedly reach for our wallet when pulled over without loudly announcing our intentions. The question before us is how do we reduce civilian deaths while...

The gravest danger in adding gun rights to “The List” is the precedent it sets. How much easier will it now be to justify proscribing the right to drive, hold a job, have a bank account, or rent a home? In short, inclusion on the list could soon mean exclusion from society. If this happened to even one person in error, that would be one too many. How can I justify that sentiment? Easy, imagine you are the error.

Decentralization of authority achieves the goals of peace, prosperity, and equality because it depends on trade. Two people that but for ideological or religious reasons would never have cause to interact are more than willing to ignore those differences and engage in the “just business” of trade. Once a trade relationship is established, a human relationship will soon follow. Trade humanizes the foreigner, stripping away their “other group” title leaving behind only the person. Trade then has the power to expand both our wealth in things and in each other. The path to uniting humanity is more, not fewer, groups....

The White House recently posted an “Email from President Obama: An Update on Overtime” on the whitehouse.gov website. For some reason I was not on the distribution list for that e-mail. Had I been, here’s what I would have said:

Speed limit signs in the US are often flouted because we all know they are for the most part set artificially too low in order to enhance revenue collection. If the rules are structured to benefit a third party more than you, they will be ignored. If the rules are structured to benefit only you, they will be respected. This respect can clearly be seen on German roads. Actually slowing down when appropriate makes the roads far safer.

Today I write this article on Memorial Day while visiting a country (Germany) that those we honor today arguably did fight to bring freedom to. Although to be precise that was only an indirect consequence of the war. They were actually fighting to stop the military encroachment of Germany on its neighbors. Had Germany been content to stay within its borders and continue on with the fascist policies of the National Socialists it is no doubt certain Americans would have not gone there to “fight for freedom.” I have often heard the phrase “as the world watched in horror” concerning...

The dynamic between liberals and conservatives is more like sibling rivalry than anything remotely resembling adult discourse. It seems they are simply not happy unless they are fighting over some new outrage du jour. And as with most childhood spats it’s never really clear who started it. Such is the case with the whole brouhaha over these “bathroom laws”. It is unclear if the Charlotte, NC ordinance permitting transgender individuals to use the bathroom of the gender for which they “identify” was in response to some specific case or was merely part of the liberal agenda of memorializing into “law”...

Countries that exert a high degree of control (totalitarian) over their citizens will always experience less “success” than those that exert little control. Less control means greater freedom to innovate and solve problems from the bottom up rather than the top down. Formerly socialist/communist countries (China, Vietnam) that have embraced the benefits of freedom (that is, free vs. state managed markets) within their borders have seen improved standards of living relative to those that have not (Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela).

US tax policy singles out manufacturing (actually nearly any business dealing in tangible goods) with unfair rules designed to extract more tax relative to a service-oriented business with the same income albeit while claiming the same tax rate. As the owner of a small US manufacturing firm, I have sadly gained firsthand knowledge of the severe disadvantage one must contend with if they have the audacity to try and make or sell goods in the United States.

The real enemy is the notion that government can only “work” as long as unwilling people are forced to participate. It is like if a hundred people went into a McDonalds to order but food could not be served until at least 51 of them agreed on what to eat, and then all 100 would have to have the same meal.

How do we know when recycling is “good” vs just “feel good”? If money is offered or it’s something best not released into the environment are two key indicators. Sometimes those two things coincide as in the case of lead acid batteries. Recycling these batteries creates a “double-whammy” effect: you make money and protect the environment! Who could object to that? The EPA apparently. Read on.

The irony of that position is that if the wage gap were employer driven, their supposed vice (greed) would quickly neutralize it. A properly “greedy” employer would seek out every women they can find in order to achieve a 20% discount on their payroll. In turn the unemployment rate for women would be 0%. But of course it is not.

Such reflexive urges to regulate by those “in charge” of our lives are a predictable outcome of their glaring ignorance of basic economics. It is the usual story: government engages in Practice A which stealthily causes Harm B and so our great benefactors must now step in to save us from the very harm they caused in the first place. For example, the federal government, through its puppet the Federal Reserve, is constantly inflating the US dollar. This steadily erodes the value of said dollar until after many years the drips of annual inflation have carved a canyon of lost...